I argue that individuals may be as problematic political agents as groups are. In doing so, I draw on theory from economics, philosophy, and computer science and evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and biology. If successful, this argument undermines agency-based justifications for embracing strong notions of individual rights while rejecting the possibility of similar rights for groups. For concreteness, I critique these mistaken views by rebutting arguments given by Chandran Kukathas in his article `Are There Any Cultural Rights?' that groups lack (...) the temporal coherence, political independence, and indivisibility of individuals. I also show how formal critiques of group agency from social science can be applied as reasonably to individuals as groups. Because these symmetries between groups and individuals undermine common implicit assumptions in political philosophy, I argue that they may have broader implications for liberal political theory, as they emphasize the importance of intrapersonal justice. (shrink)

The Nicholas Wolterstorff-Robert Audi debate surrounding the role of religious reasons in public debate remains unresolved in the United States. Alternatively, but relatedly, when politicians and Archbishops in the UK mention God the media react with force. This article seeks a more balanced reaction to the faith of politicians and Archbishops and a solution to the Wolterstorff-Audi debate. First, this article teases out the extent to which John Macmurray's philosophy of community is or is not evident in New Labour politics; (...) secondly, it expounds Macmurray's alternative ‘communitarianism’ by examining his account of church-state relations; thirdly, it introduces the philosophical notion of supervenience to provide a proper account of the relation between religious reasons and secular reasons in public debate and, finally, it provides an example of a ‘community’ that satisfies the essential criteria of Macmurray's definition. Thus, in addition to revealing the contemporary relevance of Macmurray's work and the misunderstandings surrounding the notion of community, this article engages with an ongoing international conversation on the ethics of religious voices in public places and proposes a solution to the Wolterstorff-Audi debate. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud famously described three existential insults to humanity stemming from heliocentrism, evolution, and psychoanalysis. In recent years we are, perhaps, beginning to see the emergence of a fourth: interdependency. Over the last several centuries, Anglo-American culture has modelled itself on a vision of the independent individual – strong, autonomous, and self-sufficient. Yet from feminist theory, communitarianism, disability theory, institutionalist economics, and elsewhere, the evidence mounts that independence is, in most contexts, a myth. We are, in fact, fundamentally social beings: (...) fragile, vulnerable, variously disabled, and intrinsically dependent. In their time, each of the existential insults had profound effects; they forced a re-examination of the self, which rippled throughout the culture and uprooted old practices. This article argues that taking interdependency seriously would similarly lead to profound changes in our culture, our central political concepts, and even our major institutions. (shrink)

"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: -/- This excellent collection, edited by Julian Young, features ten essays on the topic of Nietzsche’s valuation of the individual and the implications this has for notions of community. The book features contributions from some of the most respected contemporary Nietzsche scholars, and each essay displays rigorous analysis while being written in an engaging style. -/- Many of these contributions are evidently written in response to Young’s own (...) provocative reading of Nietzsche as a communitarian thinker in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Young presents aspects of this reading in the opening essay. He argues that Nietzsche’s “liberal communitarianism” (8) stems from his intellectual inheritance from Wagner of a distinctly Hegelian project, that of synthesizing the need for common meaning with the desire for liberal individual rights. Young provides a close reading of Wagner, identifying the liberal aspect of Wagner’s communitarianism in a form of “soft power” (9)—namely, the capacity to inspire, rather than coerce, the collective toward a shared ideal. This soft power opens the space for reconciliation between the desires of the individual and the goals of the community at large. Young contends that Wagner’s early Hegelianism “appears virtually word for word” in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (16). More controversially and less convincingly, he extends this liberal communitarianism across Nietzsche’s entire corpus. In particular, for Young, we should understand Nietzsche’s free spirits as “agents of change” (25), exemplary individuals who both establish and question the evaluative boundaries of the collective ethical imperative. -/- Hans Sluga’s chapter investigates Nietzsche’s call for a new “great politics” (32). Drawing comparisons with Plato, Sluga argues that Nietzsche views the lack of a socially recognized order of rank, a corollary of modern democratic pluralism, as the inception of political nihilism. Sluga locates this diagnosis in Human, All Too Human, where Nietzsche’s critique of modern democracy inaugurates his concern with the tensions between political processes and the prospect of cultural flourishing. For Sluga, however, it is in Beyond Good and Evil that Nietzsche floats the possibility of reconciliation between the two, with the prospect of exceptional individuals instigating a new political relationship. Sluga argues that Nietzsche sees the European notion of the nation-state as something that should and will be abolished. While taking Nietzsche’s recommendation to be problematic, Sluga concludes that his diagnosis is profound. [End Page 469] -/- How convincing one takes Sluga’s argument to be depends on the literalness one thinks should be placed on the phrase “great politics.” By Beyond Good and Evil, is it not employed purely as a metaphor? This would accord with Ken Gemes and Chris Sykes’s approach in the following essay. Like Young, Gemes and Sykes emphasize Nietzsche’s kinship with Wagner, identifying the problem of meaning as central to both. Nietzsche is identified as conducting an anthropology of communities’ answers to the problem of meaning, or, rather, their creations of illusions to act as semblances of meaning. In his early works they take Nietzsche to hold that the foundations for the kind of cultural consecration necessary for the provision of collective meaning can be provided through myth, in the place of metaphysics. But, contra Young, Gemes and Sykes argue that Nietzsche develops away from his early communitarianism: first, toward an (ultimately pessimistic) investigation into the possibility of a scientific culture that provides meaning, and then by advocating a narrower individualism. For Gemes and Sykes, then, Nietzsche’s aspiration for communitarian cultural flourishing died at Bayreuth, and with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche makes a final attempt to provide a life-affirming “mythology” (72) for the flourishing of his intended recipients, now of a far more limited scope—namely, only truly exemplary individuals. -/- Here one might wonder whether Nietzsche’s thought of the eternal recurrence might better fit this need for the provision of a mythology. Although Nietzsche marks out Zarathustra as the jewel of his oeuvre (EH P:4), he also declares the eternal recurrence, which receives...". (shrink)

The most prominent strand of moral thought in the African philosophical tradition is relational and cohesive, roughly demanding that we enter into community with each other. Familiar is the view that being a real person means sharing a way of life with others, perhaps even in their fate. What does such a communal ethic prescribe for the coronavirus pandemic? Might it forbid one from social distancing, at least away from intimates? Or would it entail that social distancing is wrong to (...) some degree, although morally permissible on balance? Or could it mean that social distancing is not wrong to any degree and could, under certain circumstances, be the right way to commune? In this article, I defend the latter view. I argue that, given an independently attractive understanding of how to value communal relationship, distancing oneself from others when necessary to protect them from serious incapacitation or harm can come at no cost to right action. However, I also discuss cases in which social distancing would evince a lack of good character, despite being the right thing to do. (shrink)

This essay attempts to assess recent communitarian charges that liberalism cannot provide for genuine bonds of community or fraternity. Along with providing an analysis of fraternity, I argue that there is more common ground here than supposed by communitarians and l iberals alike. Communitarians often fail to see that liberal concerns for liberty and equality function as substantive constraints on the moral worth of fraternal bonds. On the other hand, insofar as liberals ignore fraternity, or see it as a purely (...) derivative ideal, they too make an important error. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the thesis that an agreement between representatives of two different cultures can and should be reached at a theoretical level. The author tries to verify the Theory of Communicative Action proposed by Jürgen Habermas in the light of philosophical reflections of American neopragmatist Stanley Fish. Habermas is one of the most important and widely read social theorists in the post-Second World War era. He is also one of the authors of the concept (...) of deliberative democracy, which holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation – disinterested exchange of reasons – not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. The foundation of deliberative democracy is, according to the German thinker, a communicative action based on communicative rationality. Stanley Fish, in turn, is one of the most eminent American philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The main area of his scientific activity is the theory of literature, law, and history. In the course of his reflections, Fish constructed the concept of an interpretive communities, which implies an original view on the nature of the process of cognition, status of human convictions or beliefs, nature of communication situation and capabilities of theory. The final conclusion stemming from the reflection on Fish’s philosophy explains why Habermas’ theory is not an adequate tool to reach an intercultural agreement. (shrink)

In this article, I expound and assess two theories of meaning in life informed by the indigenous sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. According to one principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes community with other human persons. According to the other principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes vitality in oneself and others. I argue that, at least upon some refinement, both of these African conceptions of meaning merit global consideration from philosophers, but that the (...) vitality approach is more promising than the community one for capturing a wider array of intuitions about what confers meaning on a life. I further argue, however, that there are objections that apply with comparable force to both theories; neither one does a good job of entailing that and explaining why certain types of reason and progress can make a life more meaningful. Although these objections are characteristic of a ‘modern’ western outlook, I maintain that they are difficult for contemporary African philosophers to ignore and consider some ways they might respond to the objections. (shrink)

A large swathe of the indigenous African ethical tradition is frequently encapsulated in the maxim, “A person is a person through other persons.” This phrasing is an overly literal translation of some sayings that are prominent in the southern and central regions of Africa, but that resonate with most indigenous sub-Saharan cultures. This chapter articulates and motivates a philosophical interpretation of the maxim for an international readership interested in virtue. According to the initial formulation, one should strive to become a (...) real person, which one can do insofar as one prizes other persons’ capacity to relate harmoniously, where harmony consists of identifying with and exhibiting solidarity toward them. The chapter also explores ways of revising this theory to respond to some powerful criticisms, such as that virtue is not purely relational, but also includes some self-regarding dispositions, and that virtue can be manifested by relating to parts of the natural world, particularly to some non-human animals. (shrink)

In this article I evaluate a resurrected French resistance movement--to biotechnological commodification. The official French view that ‘the body is the person’ has been dismissed as a ‘taboo’ by the French political scientist Dominique Memmi . Yet France has indeed resisted the models of globalised commodification adopted in US bioechnology, as, for example, when the government blocked a research collaboration between the American firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals and a leading genomics laboratory, le Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, on the grounds the (...) ‘French DNA’ should not be given away. -/- This example, however, itself suggests why the ‘new French Resistance’ is not altogether liberating. The absolutist conception of all bodies as belonging to the French state—indeed, as constituting the body politic —is so potentially invasive that a counter-ideology of inviolability of the body is maintained assiduously. This inviolability is defended particularly strongly against commercialisation, but only at the moment when tissue is taken from the individual subject, who is not to be paid or compensated-- although commercial enterprises who subsequently use the tissue are not similarly constrained. -/- . (shrink)

I reconstruct the discussion originated with publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971. I argue that criticism and counter-criticism has modified in a remarkable way the original points of view with which both alignments joined the discussion.

The destiny of Igor Ivanov, which was connected to the historical events, is showed. These events influenced the life of his family and his own as well. The role of komsomol and causes, which determined his attitude to the development of ideas of kommunarstvo, are specially highlighted. Contemporary rethinking of ideas of kommunar pedagogics as a pedagogical stream of the XX century is done. The key concept of this stream is organization of collective creative education in terms of generations’ fellowship (...) and shared concerns relations. (shrink)

J. Baird Callicott defends a communitarian environmental ethic that grounds moral standing in shared kinship and community. This normative theory is unacceptable because it is out of synch with our considered moral judgments as environmental philosophers. Ecological communitarianism excludes in advance entities that would obviously qualify for moral standing, and scuttles itself in the process.

There are at least three reasons why present circumstances favor a renewal of dialogue on Hegel’s political philosophy. First, it seems increasingly clear that the collapse of the “big left” over the past two decades has produced a crisis of imagination in political theory and practice. Debate in North America particularly has polarized—on one side the splintering and perhaps ultimately cynical forces of postmodernism, on the other, the triumphal indifference of corporate capitalism. Since most thoughtful people reject both alternatives, the (...) post-Cold War years, their promise and opportunity notwithstanding, have been marked by an ethos of political disenfranchisement and the growing desire for other options. Secondly, the recent attacks on American targets and the subsequent mobilization of military/propagandist might in the war on terrorism have made evident the necessity of rethinking geopolitical paradigms. In the past year especially, the consequences of the West’s essentially colonial foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Rim and elsewhere have become frighteningly evident. Instead of surveying unsatisfying but comparatively harmless theoretical options we have seen concrete political activity around the globe becoming reduced to the dilemma of terror or armed intervention. This reduction, in turn, has exposed mere languishing in desire for other options as a species of moral cowardice. The situation now demands a positive counterproposal. Finally, and almost paradoxically, recognition of the fact that Western institutions stand under threat, that besieged by forces within and without they could fail, has produced across the political spectrum a new determination to defend them. As if danger itself were a reminder that the structures we have been descrying from the left or the right as politically compromised are nevertheless essential to the accommodation of human freedom. I can think of no time since the end of the Second World War more ripe for reflective engagement of the possibility of an autonomy won through and vouchsafed in an authentically rational state and its institutions. (shrink)

In Liberalism, Community and Culture, Will Kymlicka suggests that the cultural resources with which communitarians have been concerned, inasmuch as they are prerequisites for the individual choice of the good, are appropriate objects of liberal protection. But Kymlicka's liberalism fails to fully meet the concerns of those who see their communities as intrinsically valuable—not merely as necessary means for the clarification of their options. Ultimately Kymlicka's approach shares in the tendency of liberalism to reduce manifold values to the single standard (...) of equal concern for individuals—which results in a paternalistic disregard for those individuals’ actual motivations. (shrink)

I seek to advance enquiry into the point of a public higher education institution by drawing on ideals salient in the sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. There are relational, and specifically communal, values prominently held by African thinkers that I use to ground a promising rival to the dominant contemporary Western, and especially Anglo-American, accounts of what a university ultimately ought to strive to achieve, which focus mainly on autonomy, truth, and citizenship. My aims are not merely comparative, contrasting an Afro-communal (...) approach with other ones that have been more globally influential, but also substantive. Although the theory of a university’s point that I articulate and defend has an African pedigree, I work to show that it should be taken seriously by a global audience, for plausibly capturing a variety of intuitions and claims that are widely shared. (shrink)

Splitter commences this book by telling the reader that it was a pedagogical incident that led him to write it. Presenting a philosophical seminar series on the topic of ‘identity’ to bright undergraduate students in America from a range of disciplines heightened his realisation that we don’t all use the word in the same way to refer to the same thing. We wouldn’t normally think too much about it, assuming that identity, especially one’s own, is an obvious, assumed entity. However, (...) it is not, really, the closer you examine the concept. Which is precisely what Splitter goes on to do. (shrink)

Karl Popper is famous for favoring an open society, one in which the individual is treated as an end in himself and social arrangements are subjected to critical evaluation, which he defends largely by appeal to a Kantian ethic of respecting the dignity of rational beings. In this essay, I consider for the first time what the implications of a characteristically African ethic, instead prescribing respect for our capacity to relate communally, are for how the state should operate in an (...) open society. I argue that while an under-appreciated Afro-communal moral foundation does not prescribe a closed society, it supports an open society politics and law of a sort different from the one that Popper specifies. For Popper, the state in an open society should improve social arrangements albeit without seeking to promote a particular conception of the good life, should protect rights that merely serve the function of facilitating individual choice, and should employ majoritarian democracy to be able to avoid unwelcome rulers and policies. On all three counts, I show that a relational ethic typical of the African philosophical tradition, but having broad intuitive appeal, entails different, intuitively attractive approaches to politics and law. (shrink)

One of the main lessons to be learned from the Greek crisis is that large scale supranational communitarisation is a danger for democracy if mutual obligations between members undermine substantially the possibilities of political choice for the single member states. I argue that a well-balanced relation between responsibility, solidarity, performance incentives and democracy involves taking subsidiarity serious, as well as to admit a certain amount of institutional flexibility. This flexibility is demanded especially in the case of large scale communities which (...) include countries as members, like the EU, and in which the basic ideas of social, economical and financial policy are rather heterogeneous. Democracy, responsibility and solidarity must be in a well balanced relation for any community to function and to be generally acceptable to the citizens. This includes the defence of rather ambitious forms of civil participation and sovereignty of the people against the paternalistic pretensions of experts or of political and cultural elites. And responsibility ―as a basic condition for democracy― requires that the design of the contractual basis of the EU must make possible that voting communities really assume responsibility for their decisions, which includes bearing possible negative consequences of these decision on themselves. Preserving a certain leeway for differing decisions about economical, financial or social questions is necessary for giving democratic substance to the demand of the primacy of politics. This puts serious limits to ambitions for treaty-based supranational communitisations. (shrink)

“The idol of communism, which spread social strife, enmity and unparalleled brutality everywhere, which instilled fear in humanity, has collapsed.” These words, spoken by Russian president Boris Yeltsin before a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 1992, brought a tumultuous response from America's political leaders. The evocation of the theme of idolatry by a former member of the Communist Party was striking, all the more so because it must have called to his listeners' minds the dramatic scenes of the (...) destruction of the statues of Lenin then taking place throughout the Communist world. Nothing of the kind had been seen since the end of the Pagan era, when temples of the old gods were toppled throughout the Roman Empire. The events that historian Edward Gibbon, in his classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, described as happening in Alexandria in A.D. 389 might just as well have applied to what was happening in Minsk or Tirana: “The huge idol [of Serapis] was overthrown and broken into pieces, [its] limbs ignominiously pulled through the streets. (shrink)

As one who had been raised with a keen sense of belonging ---to a tribe, in a church, I dedicated my dissertation to exploring and expanding the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre's concepts of tradition and epistemological crisis resonate with my experience of communities. However, a consideration of a Native American tradition reveals that MacIntyre's criteria for success or failure of epistemological crisis are too narrowly drawn. I argue that the experience of the Cherokee tribe through the transitions of the (...) nineteenth century reveals a measure that MacIntyre misses in his consideration of his case studies: a tradition's power of resiliency through epistemological crises. While my study offers a useful critique to MacIntyre's work, and contributes to the discussion of communitarianism, a more fundamental purpose of this dissertation is to pose a Native American perspective which enriches political philosophy by broadening its horizons to include indigenous voices and writings. ;The work is arranged in three parts. First, I explore MacIntyre's conceptions of tradition and epistemological crisis, placing MacIntyre's work in the context of communitarian theory. The second part comprises my narrative of the Cherokee tradition from the late 1700s through the 1800s. I consider in particular two points of epistemological crisis: the move to written law in 1808, and the imposition of the Dawes Act in the 1890s. Finally, I draw upon the contemporary Cherokee tradition to explore the conception of resiliency that this case study contributes to MacIntyre's notions of traditions and epistemological crisis. I argue, in the end, that MacIntyre's understanding of traditions and epistemological crisis---and the truth that emerges from the latter---need development if he wishes to include an indigenous perspective. (shrink)